Living Bird Magazine

Living Bird is a magazine released every three months by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The editorial team, guided by director Gustave Axelson, includes writers, editors, and designers who collaborate to create the publication.

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It’s Official: Bald Eagle Is America’s Bird

1 month ago | allaboutbirds.org | Frederic Frommer

From the Spring 2025 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. Just before the end of 2024, the Bald Eagle finally became the national bird of the United States, when President Joe Biden signed legislation that gives the majestic creature its rightful, if long-delayed, perch atop America’s birds.
The Hole Story: How Woodpeckers Make Homes for the Rest of the Forest

1 month ago | allaboutbirds.org | Marc Devokaitis

Skip to Content Area By Marc Devokaitis Northern Flicker by Michael Quinton / Minden Pictures. From the Spring 2025 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. When night falls in the forest, most birds tuck into nooks where they can feel secure—the V-shaped intersection of two tree boughs, a cluster of dense branches. Some may take to the eaves of nearby houses. Brown Creepers find a piece of shaggy bark to wedge their bodies under.
A New Dawn for Birds at Chicago’s McCormick Place

Nov 20, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | Susan Cosier

From the Winter 2025 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. On a warm morning in October 2024, Dave Willard, the retired bird collections curator for Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, walked briskly along a glassy façade on the Lake Michigan shoreline, looking for fallen birds. The building made of glass is McCormick Place, the convention center infamous to birders for being the place where close to 1,000 migrating songbirds met their deaths on Oct. 5, 2023.
How Inversions and Supergenes Can Keep Similar Species From Merging

Oct 29, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | Marc Devokaitis

Originally published in the Spring 2022 issue of Living Bird magazine; updated October 2024. Subscribe now. The genomes of Baltimore and Bullock’s Oriole are almost identical, but one key point of difference is a chromosomal inversion within a set of hundreds of genes, including genes that appear to account for the different range of orange and black coloration between the two species.
Gallery: Cinnamon Stick

Sep 25, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | Marc Devokaitis

From the Autumn 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. It may look like this bird is giving the camera the stare-down, but look closely … it’s actually looking down. Spanish photographer Rafael Armada found this Cinnamon Flycatcher while exploring the Aburra Valley region of Colombia. Armada was with ornithologists documenting the northernmost population of a different species, the Yellow-headed Brushfinch, when he happened upon a pair of Cinnamon Flycatchers perched at eye level.
As Vital Whimbrel Habitat Erodes in South Carolina, Protection Comes Just in Time

Sep 25, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | Marc Devokaitis

From the Autumn 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. In May 2024, officials from the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources announced a complete, indefinite closure of Deveaux Bank—a small sandy island just off the coast of Charleston, at the mouth of the Edisto River. It’s a long-awaited boost for the thousands of Brown Pelicans that nest there, along with Black Skimmers and several species of terns.
Field Inclusive: A Small Nonprofit Aims to Make Fieldwork Safe for All

Sep 25, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | Rebecca Heisman

From the Autumn 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. In spring 2020, Covid-19 restrictions forced then-PhD student Murry Burgess to conduct her field research entirely alone. Driving to the rural North Carolina barn where she was studying the effects of light on Barn Swallow chicks, Burgess, who is Black, passed Confederate flags and endured suspicious glares when she stopped at a local gas station.
The Bald Eagle Isn’t Officially the U.S. National Bird. But It Could Be Soon

Sep 25, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | Frederic Frommer

From the Autumn 2024 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now. It’s a general axiom that Congress doesn’t pass much legislation in an election year, and that’s especially true in today’s polarized times. But lawmakers are getting behind one bill with unmistakable bipartisan appeal: designating the Bald Eagle as America’s national bird.
At Events Like Ours: Five Years of Black Birders Week

Aug 20, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | Adé Ben-Salahuddin

A gentle northward breeze blew off Long Island Sound, cooling the morning air in the amphitheater of Seaside Park in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Out beyond the pond, people started to filter in past foraging starlings and grackles. As they entered the park, they walked under the massive communal nests of our local Monk Parakeets.
The Art of Birds, The Science of Birds

Jul 26, 2024 | allaboutbirds.org | John Fitzpatrick

A longer version of this essay first appeared in Art and Illustration for Science Communication © 2022 Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Art and science might be humankind’s two most noble enterprises, and they have lived culturally hand-in-hand ever since our first applications of paint to depict animals, people, and action on the walls of caves.